Football fans urged to watch out for red flags when buying tickets online | Personal Finance | Finance

Some real examples

Here are some examples of real football ticketing scams that have occurred in recent years:

World Cup Ticket Scam (2018): During the 2018 FIFA World Cup held in Russia, several fans experienced scams involving fake or non-existent tickets. Scammers such as ticket agents or online sellers, promising tickets for highly anticipated matches. Fans paid large sums of money but never received the tickets, leading to disappointment and financial loss.

Champions League Final Scam (2019): Ahead of the UEFA Champions League Final in 2019, hosted in Madrid, scammers have created fake ticket websites offering tickets for the match. These websites appeared genuine and even displayed official logos and branding. Fans have unknowingly bought tickets from these fraudulent sites, only to find that their tickets were invalid when they arrived at the stadium.

Euro 2020 (2021) Ticket Scheme: Ticket scams have increased in the rescheduled UEFA Euro 2020 tournament, to be held in 2021, due to the high demand for tickets. Scammers took advantage of fans’ desire to attend games and advertised tickets on online platforms and social media. The victims paid for the tickets but did not receive them, resulting in a loss of money and lost opportunities to attend the games.

Premier League Ticket Resale Scams: There have been cases of individuals reselling Premier League tickets at inflated prices, taking advantage of the limited availability of tickets for popular matches. These scalpers often operate on online platforms or through classified ads, tricking fans into paying much higher prices for tickets than their face value.

These examples highlight the various ways in which fraudsters take advantage of football fans’ passion and excitement for games, often leading to financial loss and disappointment. It’s important to be careful and check when buying football tickets so you don’t fall victim to these scams.

Mailbag Scambusters – answering your questions

Question: I am a very open person and I share a lot of information on my social media profiles for my friends and family. I don’t have a private account and I noticed a lot of strangers following me. Should I be worried about how much information I’m sharing?

Answer: Criminals are increasingly looking to personalize their scams to target unsuspecting victims. Scammers will use social media in romance scams, for example. First, they will create fake profiles, with stolen pictures or identities from dating apps or websites, and use these sites to chat with strangers. They go to great lengths to gain their target’s trust, and use social media ‘scraping’ to gather personal information, such as names of relatives, friends, recent break-ups, and create complex stories that can undermine credibility. add to their approach. I recommend taking extra steps to hide your personal information from strangers where you can, including making your account private and permanently deleting your information from apps you no longer use.

Best Tip

Could you score an own goal?

If you’re a fan, you may be tempted by ‘too good to be true’ ticket offers that pop up on your social media or are directed at you via email. But how did the scammers target you? Well, they may have taken some information about you. They could have scraped data from Facebook and found out that you are a fan and put it together with an email address they bought from the dark web.

Your information may have been compromised because a selection of your personal data was lost due to a data breach which resulted in hackers selling your data to scammers who will use it against you.

The best way to avoid having your data stolen due to a data breach is to make sure it is not stored among any stolen data. You can delete your data from any company that no longer needs it by using our Rightly Protect service. It’s fast, simple and free and will tell you who owns your data and give you the chance to instruct them to delete it completely, if that’s what you want to do.

Remember: If you’ve received a text you think is a scam, you can forward it to 7726 or take a screenshot and send it to report@phishing.gov.uk. If you are receiving a lot of unwanted phone calls or text messages you can also consider removing your data from data brokers, ensuring that you use the right to object to the processing of your data. You can learn more about this on Rightly to stop sharing your data while exposing scams. And you can take a free training course on how to fight scams at www.friendsagainstscams.org.uk. The more we talk about scams, the more shame we get.